What is the best laptop for camming?

[SaffronBurke]

I currently have a toshiba satellite.

I have a Toshiba Satellite that I bought in 2013 that I still use to cam with. It's hardy enough to run multiple camsites at once - up to 3 - or to cam on Streamate while I edit and upload videos to my clipsites. I couldn't do this before when I had slower Internet - my old package had an upload speed of about 1.6mbps most days, while my current package is around 10-ishmbps. That upgrade alone made a HUGE difference in my camming ability.

 

[ramblin]

I think it's a 2011?? ... Is there any way though that getting extra memory on the side would free up RAM??

If it's 2012 or older, the RAM may be upgradable. After that it's soldered on the motherboard and you're stuck with what you have. This article walks through through identifying your model: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201300 And this one lists the possible memory for each of the upgradable models: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201165

 

[bowen]

Look at
http://pc4u.org/best-gaming-laptop/

 

[bowen]

Asus is really good choice with better performance.

 

[JeweledBeaver]

Gaming laptops focus on the video card. Since a web cam uses cpu (the chip) and not so much the video card a gaming laptop is not by definition the best option.

As reference focus on photo or video editing systems.

Thanks so much for pointing that out! I thought gaming laptops would be faster..

 

[adystan_com]

As far as computing power, nowadays most laptops with at least a I5 processor with 4gb of ram will do the trick for camming. (2 or 3 websites at the same time)
HOWEVER, the most important thing you should care about is your internet speed AND Router.
Most problems come from the network setup.

1. If you are hellbent on using wireless make sure the wireless card on your laptop is a good one and if not upgrade it to a 2 band intel wireless card (30$ ish on amazon)
2. Put the router in the same room as you and test your upload speed on speedtest.net
3. Each website might use somewhere between 500kb and 2mb (even more)
4. If you have an upload speed of 4mb then you should be able to stream successfully on 2 sites
5. Ask your ISP what is your guaranteed upload speed, NOT best effort.

 

[Antonio Lopez]

Just to be perfectly clear: If you're talking about storage of photos of videos, that's determined by the computer's hard drive capacity, not the amount of RAM it has. Increasing a computer's memory allows it run a greater number of software applications together at the same time, but generally has no effect on how it displays either photos or video.


Overall I think this laptop would be a great choice for you:

• Asus is a great brand, essentially the best outside of the big American companies.
• With an Intel i7 processor and 12 GB of RAM, it should have more than enough power for the video-encoding tasks you'll be throwing at it.
• It has a built-in, 2-terabyte drive, which will give you tonnes of space for both processing and storing videos.
• The "AC" WiFi adapter supports the highest available speeds, should you be forced to cam over a wireless connection (though unfortunately, but as is common, Asus doesn't state the WiFi adapter's manufacturer).
• It does not include a separate ("discrete") GPU for video games, which will save you money.
• The LED display should be nice and bright and provide above-average colour fidelity.

On the other hand,

• At 38 cm across and 2.3 kg in weight, it's going to be a bit unwieldy to balance and transport (as you might want to do when moving from your bedroom to the shower, for instance).
• The hard drive is of the largest capacity but also the slowest speed available on that model. (Asus does offer the same computer with a 256 GB SSD, but not through PC World, it seems.)
• It includes a DVD drive, which adds to the price and weight and honestly, how often will you be watching or burning DVDs on it?
• It includes a USB-C port, which is great (USB-C is the next emerging standard) but with your Webcam occupying the USB 2.0 port, that leaves only a single other port available for add-ons. Not a disaster, but you might find yourself forced to buy expensive USB-C accessories until that standard becomes more popular.

Really, though, I think it's a very good choice, especially for the price. I tried to find a cheaper but roughly equivalent computer on that site, and I couldn't! It seems that's really the best deal they have going right now.

Purely for the sake of comparison, if you wanted to spend a bit more money, here are two other models from that retailer I might suggest you look at:

• The Lenovo IdeaPad 510S at £649.99. It includes an even faster i7 processor but less memory (8 GB; still adequate). It does, though, feature a 256 GB SSD, which provides much less storage space for videos but much, much faster access to data overall. (As a result, this computer will feel a lot faster than the Asus.) It's also smaller and lighter, with a 14" display and weighing only 1.7 kg, so it will be easier to move and to balance on furniture. It also omits a DVD drive. Otherwise, it's pretty comparable to your Asus.
• The Asus ZenBook UX310UA, also at £649.99. This one is even smaller and lighter (13.3" display, 1.45 kg) and has 8 GB of RAM and no DVD drive, just like the Lenovo. It features an i5 processor, not an i7, but given it has the same number of cores (two) and only a slightly slower clock rate the difference in raw performance should not be too great. Its main appeal is that it contains both an SSD and a mechanical hard drive: You'd keep the operating system (Windows) and your most frequently used applications on the 128 GB SSD, while the 500 GB mechanical drive would give you a comfortable amount of room for processing and storing videos. This laptop also features a much higher-resolution display, which would give you (among other things) much sharper text to look at.

To answer your question about SSDs versus traditional hard drives: As a rule, SSDs offer

• Low amounts (128-512 GB) of storage for data, but
• Very fast access to that data at
• Relatively high prices;

while traditional, mechanical hard drives offer

• Very large amounts of storage (1-2 terabytes, or 1,000-2,000 GB) for data, but
• Relatively slow access to that data at
• Very affordable prices.

Bear in mind "data" here can include not only things like photos and videos but all the software you have installed on your computer, including Windows itself.

As a rule, SSDs are worth the cost for storing data you need fast access to every day. This includes the operating system itself, all of your most frequently used applications and any data you know you are going to be working with right away.

Mechanical hard drives are a better value if price is a main concern, or for storing large amounts of data you know you'll access only every now and then. For this reason they're a great choice for archiving videos, which need to be encoded only once (and generally it's not a problem if the computer spends an entire night doing it) and from thereafter are only accessed from time to time.

Does that make sense? I realize this is a lot of information. In short, I think the Asus model you pointed out is a very good choice, and while you might be able to find a slightly more suitable model somewhere else, I think it's going to be very hard to do for that price.

I'm new here, but this is a very impressive response. Should model for technical people on how to explain the complex to those with beginner knowledge. Patient, no condescension, and very clear. Seriously you'd be a good teacher.

 

[Brittney Snow]

Although I've never been a Webcam model, I do know computers and can offer a bit of general advice.

As models, the most demanding task you'll be asking your computer to perform is video encoding: Both encoding the video feed that travels from your Webcam to the cam site for broadcast, and encoding "offline" videos you intend to sell on sites like ManyVids. This task is inherently processor-intensive, and for this reason you should be looking first for a laptop with a relatively beefy CPU; nowadays that means either an Intel i5 or i7 CPU or their equivalents from AMD.

Be aware that CPU clock speed, measured in gigahertz, is not as important a figure as it once was. It has to be considered together with the number of physical cores a CPU offers, each of which is actually a separate processor that runs independently of the others: A quad-core CPU, for instance, can execute four separate tasks at the same time, and will in many instances be faster than a dual-core CPU with a higher clock rate. (One of the advantages of the i7 CPU over the i5 is that it is available with a greater number of cores.)

The resource you'll run out of next is memory: Generally, the more memory (RAM) your computer has, the more work it can manage at one time and the more data it can cache (keep close at hand) to allow it to respond more quickly as its workload changes. (Note this has nothing to do with hard drive capacity, which is separate from memory.) In my opinion, you should be looking for a laptop with at least 8 gigabytes of RAM. This is not a hard-and-fast requirement, but the more money you are able to spend in this area, the longer the laptop will be of use to you and the quicker it will appear to run, especially under load.

Most of your money should be spent on the laptop's CPU and RAM. Everything else is secondary for the work you do, but I would suggest allocating your money next to the hard drive, which provides bulk storage for data. Hard drives are nowadays available in two forms: traditional, mechanical drives; and solid-state drives, or SSDs. SSDs are more expensive than mechanical hard drives, but are much faster as well, and can significantly reduce the amount of time your computer spends encoding offline videos (in addition to increasing its apparent speed overall). Raw video tends to consume a lot of space, so if you know you'll be producing a lot of offline videos for sale, you'll want to buy a laptop with the largest hard drive capacity (also measured in gigabytes) you can reasonably afford.

If buying a laptop with a large (512 GB, say) SSD is outside your price range, it's possible to take a hybrid approach: Buy a laptop with a small, internal SSD drive for performance, then buy separately an external, mechanical hard drive used exclusively for encoding and archiving videos. This gives you the best of both worlds: High performance for day-to-day tasks, combined with cheap storage for the videos you produce.

With any money that's left, I'd suggest looking at the network adapter—brand-name Ethernet and WiFi adapters from companies like Intel generally perform better than low-cost adapters from companies like Realtek, and can improve the overall quality of your video feed—and the display, since you'll likely be spending a fair bit of time looking at the screen.

One thing you specifically don't need to spend money on is a high-end graphics processing unit (GPU) of the sort used to power video games, particularly the chips offered by AMD and Nvidia. These are expensive and generally will not do anything to improve the quality of your video feed. Look instead for a laptop advertised with "integrated graphics" or "business graphics", assuming you don't actually intend to use it for gaming yourself.

For this reason, while a gaming laptop will certainly have the horsepower you need, buying one means you'll be paying for an expensive GPU (along with lots of fans and flashing lights) that won't actually generate a return for you.

One other thing I'll note: Pay attention to the number of USB ports a laptop offers. These are frequently the only way to extend a laptop's functionality, and leaving your Webcam plugged in means one will be tied up continuously. If you plan to use an external hard drive as well, along with perhaps an external keyboard and mouse, you could find yourself quickly running out of ports on some models.

I hope that's helpful. If there are specific laptops you're considering buying, post links to their product pages here and I'll be happy to give you my opinion on their specs.

Although I've never been a Webcam model, I do know computers and can offer a bit of general advice.

As models, the most demanding task you'll be asking your computer to perform is video encoding: Both encoding the video feed that travels from your Webcam to the cam site for broadcast, and encoding "offline" videos you intend to sell on sites like ManyVids. This task is inherently processor-intensive, and for this reason you should be looking first for a laptop with a relatively beefy CPU; nowadays that means either an Intel i5 or i7 CPU or their equivalents from AMD.

Be aware that CPU clock speed, measured in gigahertz, is not as important a figure as it once was. It has to be considered together with the number of physical cores a CPU offers, each of which is actually a separate processor that runs independently of the others: A quad-core CPU, for instance, can execute four separate tasks at the same time, and will in many instances be faster than a dual-core CPU with a higher clock rate. (One of the advantages of the i7 CPU over the i5 is that it is available with a greater number of cores.)

The resource you'll run out of next is memory: Generally, the more memory (RAM) your computer has, the more work it can manage at one time and the more data it can cache (keep close at hand) to allow it to respond more quickly as its workload changes. (Note this has nothing to do with hard drive capacity, which is separate from memory.) In my opinion, you should be looking for a laptop with at least 8 gigabytes of RAM. This is not a hard-and-fast requirement, but the more money you are able to spend in this area, the longer the laptop will be of use to you and the quicker it will appear to run, especially under load.

Most of your money should be spent on the laptop's CPU and RAM. Everything else is secondary for the work you do, but I would suggest allocating your money next to the hard drive, which provides bulk storage for data. Hard drives are nowadays available in two forms: traditional, mechanical drives; and solid-state drives, or SSDs. SSDs are more expensive than mechanical hard drives, but are much faster as well, and can significantly reduce the amount of time your computer spends encoding offline videos (in addition to increasing its apparent speed overall). Raw video tends to consume a lot of space, so if you know you'll be producing a lot of offline videos for sale, you'll want to buy a laptop with the largest hard drive capacity (also measured in gigabytes) you can reasonably afford.

If buying a laptop with a large (512 GB, say) SSD is outside your price range, it's possible to take a hybrid approach: Buy a laptop with a small, internal SSD drive for performance, then buy separately an external, mechanical hard drive used exclusively for encoding and archiving videos. This gives you the best of both worlds: High performance for day-to-day tasks, combined with cheap storage for the videos you produce.

With any money that's left, I'd suggest looking at the network adapter—brand-name Ethernet and WiFi adapters from companies like Intel generally perform better than low-cost adapters from companies like Realtek, and can improve the overall quality of your video feed—and the display, since you'll likely be spending a fair bit of time looking at the screen.

One thing you specifically don't need to spend money on is a high-end graphics processing unit (GPU) of the sort used to power video games, particularly the chips offered by AMD and Nvidia. These are expensive and generally will not do anything to improve the quality of your video feed. Look instead for a laptop advertised with "integrated graphics" or "business graphics", assuming you don't actually intend to use it for gaming yourself.

For this reason, while a gaming laptop will certainly have the horsepower you need, buying one means you'll be paying for an expensive GPU (along with lots of fans and flashing lights) that won't actually generate a return for you.

One other thing I'll note: Pay attention to the number of USB ports a laptop offers. These are frequently the only way to extend a laptop's functionality, and leaving your Webcam plugged in means one will be tied up continuously. If you plan to use an external hard drive as well, along with perhaps an external keyboard and mouse, you could find yourself quickly running out of ports on some models.

I hope that's helpful. If there are specific laptops you're considering buying, post links to their product pages here and I'll be happy to give you my opinion on their specs.

first of all thank you for all your amazing info you've really helped clear things up for me in just a few of your posts. So I understand I need more cores (ex. Quad core) and more ram? Also an ssd is the better option for functionality because I can always use an external hard drive for storage, so I guess my next best question is if money is no object what would be my best option on the market for camming? I mostly cam in one room of my house so I'm open to desktops as well also as of right now I'm using a MacBook Pro with a Logitech webcam but I plan on using open broadcast software with a canon t6i & hoping to upgrade to a 70D soon so not sure if I'll need a better computer for that. Thanks again for all your help!

 

[AlexisNicole1992]

Although I've never been a Webcam model, I do know computers and can offer a bit of general advice.

As models, the most demanding task you'll be asking your computer to perform is video encoding: Both encoding the video feed that travels from your Webcam to the cam site for broadcast, and encoding "offline" videos you intend to sell on sites like ManyVids. This task is inherently processor-intensive, and for this reason you should be looking first for a laptop with a relatively beefy CPU; nowadays that means either an Intel i5 or i7 CPU or their equivalents from AMD.

Be aware that CPU clock speed, measured in gigahertz, is not as important a figure as it once was. It has to be considered together with the number of physical cores a CPU offers, each of which is actually a separate processor that runs independently of the others: A quad-core CPU, for instance, can execute four separate tasks at the same time, and will in many instances be faster than a dual-core CPU with a higher clock rate. (One of the advantages of the i7 CPU over the i5 is that it is available with a greater number of cores.)

The resource you'll run out of next is memory: Generally, the more memory (RAM) your computer has, the more work it can manage at one time and the more data it can cache (keep close at hand) to allow it to respond more quickly as its workload changes. (Note this has nothing to do with hard drive capacity, which is separate from memory.) In my opinion, you should be looking for a laptop with at least 8 gigabytes of RAM. This is not a hard-and-fast requirement, but the more money you are able to spend in this area, the longer the laptop will be of use to you and the quicker it will appear to run, especially under load.

Most of your money should be spent on the laptop's CPU and RAM. Everything else is secondary for the work you do, but I would suggest allocating your money next to the hard drive, which provides bulk storage for data. Hard drives are nowadays available in two forms: traditional, mechanical drives; and solid-state drives, or SSDs. SSDs are more expensive than mechanical hard drives, but are much faster as well, and can significantly reduce the amount of time your computer spends encoding offline videos (in addition to increasing its apparent speed overall). Raw video tends to consume a lot of space, so if you know you'll be producing a lot of offline videos for sale, you'll want to buy a laptop with the largest hard drive capacity (also measured in gigabytes) you can reasonably afford.

If buying a laptop with a large (512 GB, say) SSD is outside your price range, it's possible to take a hybrid approach: Buy a laptop with a small, internal SSD drive for performance, then buy separately an external, mechanical hard drive used exclusively for encoding and archiving videos. This gives you the best of both worlds: High performance for day-to-day tasks, combined with cheap storage for the videos you produce.

With any money that's left, I'd suggest looking at the network adapter—brand-name Ethernet and WiFi adapters from companies like Intel generally perform better than low-cost adapters from companies like Realtek, and can improve the overall quality of your video feed—and the display, since you'll likely be spending a fair bit of time looking at the screen.

One thing you specifically don't need to spend money on is a high-end graphics processing unit (GPU) of the sort used to power video games, particularly the chips offered by AMD and Nvidia. These are expensive and generally will not do anything to improve the quality of your video feed. Look instead for a laptop advertised with "integrated graphics" or "business graphics", assuming you don't actually intend to use it for gaming yourself.

For this reason, while a gaming laptop will certainly have the horsepower you need, buying one means you'll be paying for an expensive GPU (along with lots of fans and flashing lights) that won't actually generate a return for you.

One other thing I'll note: Pay attention to the number of USB ports a laptop offers. These are frequently the only way to extend a laptop's functionality, and leaving your Webcam plugged in means one will be tied up continuously. If you plan to use an external hard drive as well, along with perhaps an external keyboard and mouse, you could find yourself quickly running out of ports on some models.

I hope that's helpful. If there are specific laptops you're considering buying, post links to their product pages here and I'll be happy to give you my opinion on their specs.

Ok. So I have a Lenovo 282mb Thinkpad laptop with Windows 7 professional. What would I need as far as an external hard drive in a camera to make this suitable for using sites like Xotika?

 

[AlexisNicole1992]

Although I've never been a Webcam model, I do know computers and can offer a bit of general advice.

As models, the most demanding task you'll be asking your computer to perform is video encoding: Both encoding the video feed that travels from your Webcam to the cam site for broadcast, and encoding "offline" videos you intend to sell on sites like ManyVids. This task is inherently processor-intensive, and for this reason you should be looking first for a laptop with a relatively beefy CPU; nowadays that means either an Intel i5 or i7 CPU or their equivalents from AMD.

Be aware that CPU clock speed, measured in gigahertz, is not as important a figure as it once was. It has to be considered together with the number of physical cores a CPU offers, each of which is actually a separate processor that runs independently of the others: A quad-core CPU, for instance, can execute four separate tasks at the same time, and will in many instances be faster than a dual-core CPU with a higher clock rate. (One of the advantages of the i7 CPU over the i5 is that it is available with a greater number of cores.)

The resource you'll run out of next is memory: Generally, the more memory (RAM) your computer has, the more work it can manage at one time and the more data it can cache (keep close at hand) to allow it to respond more quickly as its workload changes. (Note this has nothing to do with hard drive capacity, which is separate from memory.) In my opinion, you should be looking for a laptop with at least 8 gigabytes of RAM. This is not a hard-and-fast requirement, but the more money you are able to spend in this area, the longer the laptop will be of use to you and the quicker it will appear to run, especially under load.

Most of your money should be spent on the laptop's CPU and RAM. Everything else is secondary for the work you do, but I would suggest allocating your money next to the hard drive, which provides bulk storage for data. Hard drives are nowadays available in two forms: traditional, mechanical drives; and solid-state drives, or SSDs. SSDs are more expensive than mechanical hard drives, but are much faster as well, and can significantly reduce the amount of time your computer spends encoding offline videos (in addition to increasing its apparent speed overall). Raw video tends to consume a lot of space, so if you know you'll be producing a lot of offline videos for sale, you'll want to buy a laptop with the largest hard drive capacity (also measured in gigabytes) you can reasonably afford.

If buying a laptop with a large (512 GB, say) SSD is outside your price range, it's possible to take a hybrid approach: Buy a laptop with a small, internal SSD drive for performance, then buy separately an external, mechanical hard drive used exclusively for encoding and archiving videos. This gives you the best of both worlds: High performance for day-to-day tasks, combined with cheap storage for the videos you produce.

With any money that's left, I'd suggest looking at the network adapter—brand-name Ethernet and WiFi adapters from companies like Intel generally perform better than low-cost adapters from companies like Realtek, and can improve the overall quality of your video feed—and the display, since you'll likely be spending a fair bit of time looking at the screen.

One thing you specifically don't need to spend money on is a high-end graphics processing unit (GPU) of the sort used to power video games, particularly the chips offered by AMD and Nvidia. These are expensive and generally will not do anything to improve the quality of your video feed. Look instead for a laptop advertised with "integrated graphics" or "business graphics", assuming you don't actually intend to use it for gaming yourself.

For this reason, while a gaming laptop will certainly have the horsepower you need, buying one means you'll be paying for an expensive GPU (along with lots of fans and flashing lights) that won't actually generate a return for you.

One other thing I'll note: Pay attention to the number of USB ports a laptop offers. These are frequently the only way to extend a laptop's functionality, and leaving your Webcam plugged in means one will be tied up continuously. If you plan to use an external hard drive as well, along with perhaps an external keyboard and mouse, you could find yourself quickly running out of ports on some models.

I hope that's helpful. If there are specific laptops you're considering buying, post links to their product pages here and I'll be happy to give you my opinion on their specs.

Yo

I believe you're making the very common mistake of confusing storage and memory. Think of storage as the size of the deck in your favorite card game, and memory as the size of your hand. You own all the cards in your deck, but can only do anything with the cards in your hand. Storage (hard drive or ssd) lets you keep more stuff. Memory (RAM) lets you work with more stuff at once. Being able to work with more stuff at once generally means you can work faster.

One of the disadvantages of Macs is that they generally don't have upgradeable RAM. The thing that goes in (or technically replaces) the CD drive is storage of some sort. This would help you keep more things on your computer, and if it was a fast storage device like a Solid State Drive (SSD), it would make accessing that stuff (drawing and discarding in our analogy above) a lot faster. It will not, however, help with actually streaming, which needs a fast CPU and a decent amount of RAM.

If you choose About This Mac from the Apple menu in the upper-left corner of the screen, it will tell you the processor and memory, which you can compare against Simon's recommendations above.

Omg thank you. I needed to know this. Ok so I have a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop with Windows Vista

Just to be perfectly clear: If you're talking about storage of photos of videos, that's determined by the computer's hard drive capacity, not the amount of RAM it has. Increasing a computer's memory allows it run a greater number of software applications together at the same time, but generally has no effect on how it displays either photos or video.


Overall I think this laptop would be a great choice for you:

• Asus is a great brand, essentially the best outside of the big American companies.
• With an Intel i7 processor and 12 GB of RAM, it should have more than enough power for the video-encoding tasks you'll be throwing at it.
• It has a built-in, 2-terabyte drive, which will give you tonnes of space for both processing and storing videos.
• The "AC" WiFi adapter supports the highest available speeds, should you be forced to cam over a wireless connection (though unfortunately, but as is common, Asus doesn't state the WiFi adapter's manufacturer).
• It does not include a separate ("discrete") GPU for video games, which will save you money.
• The LED display should be nice and bright and provide above-average colour fidelity.

On the other hand,

• At 38 cm across and 2.3 kg in weight, it's going to be a bit unwieldy to balance and transport (as you might want to do when moving from your bedroom to the shower, for instance).
• The hard drive is of the largest capacity but also the slowest speed available on that model. (Asus does offer the same computer with a 256 GB SSD, but not through PC World, it seems.)
• It includes a DVD drive, which adds to the price and weight and honestly, how often will you be watching or burning DVDs on it?
• It includes a USB-C port, which is great (USB-C is the next emerging standard) but with your Webcam occupying the USB 2.0 port, that leaves only a single other port available for add-ons. Not a disaster, but you might find yourself forced to buy expensive USB-C accessories until that standard becomes more popular.

Really, though, I think it's a very good choice, especially for the price. I tried to find a cheaper but roughly equivalent computer on that site, and I couldn't! It seems that's really the best deal they have going right now.

Purely for the sake of comparison, if you wanted to spend a bit more money, here are two other models from that retailer I might suggest you look at:

• The Lenovo IdeaPad 510S at £649.99. It includes an even faster i7 processor but less memory (8 GB; still adequate). It does, though, feature a 256 GB SSD, which provides much less storage space for videos but much, much faster access to data overall. (As a result, this computer will feel a lot faster than the Asus.) It's also smaller and lighter, with a 14" display and weighing only 1.7 kg, so it will be easier to move and to balance on furniture. It also omits a DVD drive. Otherwise, it's pretty comparable to your Asus.
• The Asus ZenBook UX310UA, also at £649.99. This one is even smaller and lighter (13.3" display, 1.45 kg) and has 8 GB of RAM and no DVD drive, just like the Lenovo. It features an i5 processor, not an i7, but given it has the same number of cores (two) and only a slightly slower clock rate the difference in raw performance should not be too great. Its main appeal is that it contains both an SSD and a mechanical hard drive: You'd keep the operating system (Windows) and your most frequently used applications on the 128 GB SSD, while the 500 GB mechanical drive would give you a comfortable amount of room for processing and storing videos. This laptop also features a much higher-resolution display, which would give you (among other things) much sharper text to look at.

To answer your question about SSDs versus traditional hard drives: As a rule, SSDs offer

• Low amounts (128-512 GB) of storage for data, but
• Very fast access to that data at
• Relatively high prices;

while traditional, mechanical hard drives offer

• Very large amounts of storage (1-2 terabytes, or 1,000-2,000 GB) for data, but
• Relatively slow access to that data at
• Very affordable prices.

Bear in mind "data" here can include not only things like photos and videos but all the software you have installed on your computer, including Windows itself.

As a rule, SSDs are worth the cost for storing data you need fast access to every day. This includes the operating system itself, all of your most frequently used applications and any data you know you are going to be working with right away.

Mechanical hard drives are a better value if price is a main concern, or for storing large amounts of data you know you'll access only every now and then. For this reason they're a great choice for archiving videos, which need to be encoded only once (and generally it's not a problem if the computer spends an entire night doing it) and from thereafter are only accessed from time to time.

Does that make sense? I realize this is a lot of information. In short, I think the Asus model you pointed out is a very good choice, and while you might be able to find a slightly more suitable model somewhere else, I think it's going to be very hard to do for that price.